Inciting to Violence

The uproar started just a year ago.

Once again, the U.S. seemed to be escalating the war in Viet Nam--this time with an armored foray into Laos --and once again U.S. university campuses were up in arms. Stanford saw a fire-bombing and many smashed windows. Radical students decided to protest further by seizing the university's $5 million Computation Center. Angry students mobilized in White Plaza and found the center's doors all locked.

While the students milled about, a professor named H. Bruce Franklin harangued them on their duties: "So now what we're asking is for people to make that tiny little gesture to ... shut down the most obvious machinery of war, such as that Computation Center.'"

Shortly thereafter, the crowd broke into the building, took control and cut off the power to the computers. Officials countered by summoning the police. It was not an epic battle, but it was enough to convince Stanford President Richard Lyman that he had to deal with the question of H. Bruce Franklin, associate professor of English, recognized expert on Melville, and self-proclaimed Maoist. Only a month earlier, Franklin had joined a band of students in heckling Henry Cabot Lodge, former U.S. ambassador to Saigon, with cries of "oink-oink." When Lyman complained that Franklin's behavior was inappropriate, Franklin agreed, adding: "The appropriate response to war criminals is [that] they should be locked up or executed." Lyman now proposed that Franklin be fired on four charges of disrupting the university by incitements to violence.

Franklin, 37, a short, wiry figure who likes to appear in battered khaki Army shirts, had come to this crisis by a circuitous route. Son of a small stockbroker in New York, he was the first member of his family to go to college (Amherst), and there was no radicalism then. In the late '50s he even served as an intelligence officer for the Strategic Air Command. It was only in 1965, when he was already well established in Stanford's English department, that he began to turn into a "revolutionary," which he defined as "someone who believes that the rich people who run the country ought to be overthrown and that the poor and working people ought to run the country. Simple, isn't it?"

Franklin, claiming his rights of free speech, demanded a full hearing on his case. As a tenured professor (on the Stanford faculty since 1961), he had the support of many teachers who disagreed with both his views and his vehemence. To academics, tenure after several years of service is almost sacred; it represents job security, the freedom to speak and write without fear of reprisal.

Lyman arranged for a quasi-judicial hearing, probably the most elaborate ever held for a controversial teacher. A seven-member faculty board worked full time for six weeks, listening to more than 100 witnesses, as well as tapes of Franklin's various speeches. Last week it delivered its verdict. It dismissed the Lodge episode, but it decided unanimously that "Professor Franklin did intentionally incite and urge persons at the White Plaza rally to occupy the Computation Center illegally." More generally, the board said: "Professor Franklin engages in a pattern of conduct that constitutes a continual challenge to the institution." By a 5-to-2 majority, the board declared that Franklin should be dismissed forthwith, just as President Lyman had pro posed. The minority filed a dissenting opinion that Franklin should remain as "a part of what this university or any university is meant to be."

Franklin's reaction was melodramatic. He called a press conference and brought along his blonde wife Jane, who carried an unloaded carbine to demonstrate that "that's where political power comes from" (a variation on one of Chairman Mao's favorite sayings). Franklin declared that the hearing had been "a roaring success" because it had "brought this fascism out from under the rocks." Would there be violence on the campus? "I hope so," said Franklin.

By week's end, Franklin's hope had not been realized. But a group of 75 professors expressed "outrage," and Nobel-prizewinning Chemist Linus Pauling denounced "a great blow to freedom of speech." Daniel Ellsberg of "Pentagon Papers" fame drew a crowd of 2,000 to Stanford's Memorial Church, where he defended Franklin's politics and admitted his own "bafflement" at the problem of ending the Viet Nam War. Later, some 200 students marched to President Lyman's office and nailed an ultimatum to his door: "Rehire Bruce by Tuesday noon." With Defense Department recruiters scheduled to visit Palo Alto before the ultimatum runs out. Franklin still had reason to hold to his hopes.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.